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20 thoughts on “Wallace Stevens: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

Fresh indeed. This is such a wonderful poem. I had the chance, two years ago, to teach it among other poems to a group of freshmen. Some tuned out, but quite a few were entranced. Perhaps I planted some seeds….

I know what you mean. I was browsing one of my shelves the other day, and realized that I’d achieved an age that some of the poets on it – James Wright, Berryman, Richard Hugo – never reached. How the hell did that happen?

Apologies for jumping in ahead of Robert, but there are a lot of reasons for the various species of blackbirds to appear in poems. They can be fairly big birds, and they are not afraid of hanging around people, including poets, so there’s observational material to work with. Like white swans, they have a built-in visual contrast that lets them symbolize abstracts, conventionally death or mystery.

If one watches them closely, their intelligence may be noticed, which adds a practical addition to their mystery.Their flocking behavior and social organization can be spectacular, they can fill trees and explode out of them like dark, instantly coordinated, clouds. I don’t recall any poems that feature that off hand though.

As Stevens often composed poems while walking to work, I wonder if observed blackbirds then.

Anyway, glad to see this poem here. Enormously influential to me after encountering it as young man or old boy. For a few months I kept writing poems with varied length sections and Roman numerals. I doubt I was the only one (grin).

Thanks for jumping in, Frank. And then of course you must consider the very nature and symbolism of the bird archetype, combined with the descriptor “black.” Both carry a great deal of baggage. And if you look at particular species of black birds, especially the corvids – crows and ravens – you’ll see that they appear in mythology as uncanny tricksters, as beings connected to the spirits or the underworld. There’s simply a lot there!